Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Carmelitas. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post. The original recipe can be found over at Lulu the Baker.
Robyn’s Take:
This week’s recipe was my choice. I don’t remember where I first read about Carmelitas or what was said about them, but it was enough to make me go look for a recipe. This one looked pretty simple – but tasty! – so I thought we should give it a try. Luckily, Nance agreed. (Or more likely, Nance said “Yeah, fine, whatever” after glancing at the picture of what they look like.)
Your ingredients:
Caramels, heavy cream, melted butter, brown sugar, flour, rolled oats, baking soda, and semisweet chocolate chips.
I had one hell of a time finding the caramels at the grocery store. I must have walked up and down the damn candy aisle three times before I thought to look at the big Halloween candy display at the front of the store. (Then I bought two bags, because they were buy one, get one free and there’s nothing I love as much as a good B1G1 sale.)
Okay, so first you combine your caramels and cream in a saucepan over low heat. Like such:
This part took longer than I expected, probably my heat was a little too low, but when it comes to stuff like this I figure I’d rather go too low than too high and burn the crap out of everything. (If you want, you can use homemade or store-bought caramel sauce instead.)
I actually watched the clock on this, so I can tell you that it took almost 20 minutes for my caramels and heavy cream to melt together and be all smooth and tasty looking.
The recipe actually makes it look like you should do the next part when the caramel sauce is done, but I’m a multi-tasker, so while the caramels were slowly, slowly, slowwwwwwly melting, I started the “crust” part of the recipe. It’s simple – mix together melted butter, brown sugar, flour, oats, and baking soda. Then pat half of the mixture into the bottom of an 8×8″ pan.
Bake it for 10 minutes. It just so happened that when this part was done, my caramel sauce was done, too. So it was just a matter of sprinkling the chocolate chips over the hot oatmeal crust, pouring the caramel sauce over that, and then crumbling the other half of the oatmeal mixture over the top.
Then you bake it for 15 – 20 minutes, and while it’s cooking, you go snorgle you some kittens.
Those kittens are 5 weeks old now, and MY GOD the attitude on them. I punish them by kissing them as often as possible. They HATE it. (Okay, they don’t. They don’t understand it, but they tolerate it.)
Once out of the oven, it took hours and hours for this stuff to cool down. I waited until it was completely cool before I cut a piece to try. They were still warm, like, 5 hours later.
The verdict? I thought they were pretty good the day I made them, even better the next day, but the day after THAT is when they crossed the line into completely awesome. Fred thought they were okay the day I made them, but he was completely uninterested in trying them again after that (I think he’s not quite the fan of caramel that I am.)
I will absolutely be making these again in the future – but only when we’re expecting company so that I don’t end up eating them all by myself!
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Have a recipe you want us to make? Check out this page (there’s also a link to that page up there under the banner) and follow the instructions to submit a recipe!
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Nance’s Take:
I decided to write Robyn a note so she could visualize my enthusiasm for the recipe she picked.
I wonder if Robyn understood my message.
Yes, I am throwing shade at her because we just made stuff with caramel!
These are unwrapped caramels in a pan with some heavy cream. I know you’re impressed.
Rumor has it that cats like cream, but Waldo wouldn’t know because I also heard a rumor about cats, cream, and diarrhea.
Nothing more boring than waiting for something to boil. Or melt.
Apparently I’m psychic because I called this shit before the cream was even added.
Not going to lie…I ate some of this before I patted it into the pan. And by patted I really mean smashed that shit into the bottom of the pan with a spoon.
Grabbed it out of the oven and tossed the chocolate chips in. Action shot, FTW!
The beagle would like to know why Robyn had to pick a recipe that includes chocolate because that’s just RUDE. Note: Waldo in background. The cat knows how to open the cupboard doors, but refuses to close them. Very annoying.
Thankful that I was not the recipient of a hot caramel burn.
These two didn’t hear about the chocolate part of the recipe yet. I smell disappointment in their future. Thanks, Robyn.
I sprinkled the other half of the oatmeal mixture on top and once I threw it in the oven and set the timer I went to take a nap. Shirley made sure the house didn’t burn down.
This is what it looked like when I came downstairs later. I was pissed when I saw that caramel up on the sides because OHHELLNO.
I knew this was going to be some messy, sticky shit to deal with and this recipe did nothing but prove me right. You can’t even eat it without having a mess on your hands. That, to me, makes this cookie recipe an absolute dud.
What kind of cookie needs a fork to eat it with? The wrong kind.
Cuisine: With a name like that, it's gotta be Spanish! Italian? Oh, I don't KNOW.
Serves: 12
Ingredients
32 caramel squares, unwrapped (OR 1⅓ c. Kraft Caramel Bits)
½ c. heavy cream
¾ c. butter, melted
¾ c. packed brown sugar
1 c. all-purpose flour
1 c. rolled oats
1 tsp baking soda
6 oz. semisweet chocolate chips
Instructions
Combine caramels and cream in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until completely smooth; set aside. (If you prefer to use homemade or store-bought caramel sauce in place of the caramels & cream, use 1¼ c. of caramel sauce, and omit the caramels squares and heavy cream.)
In a separate bowl, combine melted butter, brown sugar, flour, oats, and baking soda. Mix well. Pat half of the oatmeal mixture into the bottom of an 8x8" baking pan.
Bake at 350ºF for 10 minutes.
Remove pan from oven and sprinkle chocolate chips evenly over crust. Pour caramel sauce over chocolate chips. Crumble the remaining oatmeal mixture over the top of the caramel.
Return pan to oven and bake an additional 15 - 20 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned.
Cool completely before cutting.
Store and serve at room temperature - you can put the pan in the fridge to help with the cooling; it takes several hours at room temperature to cool completely.
Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Twix Brownies. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post. The original recipe can be found over at Jasey’s Crazy Daisy.
Robyn’s Take:
This week’s recipe was my choice – but really it was Fred’s choice. He saw the picture on Facebook or something, and emailed me the link telling me that he’d be kind enough to allow me to make them for him, because he is ALL HEART. I, in turn, added it to my list of potential recipes, and when it was time for Nance and I to set up our schedule of recipes (we plan them weeks and weeks – really, months – in advance, just so you know), I made him look through the list and choose what he wanted me to make. Because I think we all know that if left to my own devices, I’ll eat Asian chicken for all my meals, and Dove ice cream bars (or Mayfield ice cream sandwiches) for all my sweets cravings. Stuck in a rut, is my usual default. I LIKE IT THAT WAY.
It, luckily for Fred, wasn’t until I was ready to make the Twix Brownies that I realized what a huge fucking PAIN IN THE ASS this whole thing was going to be. So I shot a glare in his general direction and started making them at 11 am.
Your ingredients:
Sandies cookies, brownie mix, hot fudge ice cream topping, caramels, heavy cream, milk chocolate chips, butter.
My gripe this time around: recipe calls for a 14 ounce bag of caramels, and my grocery store only had 11-ounce bags. Fred, who WAS NOT MAKING THE FUCKING BROWNIES (and yet this did not stop him from making an unsolicited offering on the topic) thought I should just use a single 11-ounce bag. I wonder who would be the first one to complain if there wasn’t enough of a caramel layer, who oh who would be FIRST IN LINE to bitch about that, do you think? A MYSTERY. Instead, I bought two 11-ounce bags, measured out 14 ounces on the kitchen scale, and crammed the leftovers into my face over the rest of the weekend. Damn, I love caramels.
CARE. UH. MELLS. Is how you pronounce that. Properly. For the record.
First, you make your crust. You do that by cramming cookies into a food processor and processing them until they look like sand. I made the mistake of putting ALL my cookies in at the same time. If I were to do it again, I’d do half the cookies at a time, just because it’d save me from having to take the top off the food processor, stir the cookies around, put the top back on, run the food processor some more, and repeat. The profanities: I used them liberally.
When you finally have your cookies ground down to a sand-like texture, mix your sand with melted butter, and then spread it out on the bottom of a 9×13 pan.
Clearly I lined my pan with tin foil, which made life a whole lot easier when time came to cut the brownies – we just lifted the whole thing out, peeled down one corner of the foil, and cut. I highly recommend this technique.
Then you mix your brownie mix (following the directions on the back of the box), and add 1/4 cup of hot fudge ice cream topping. Don’t bother to warm the topping first, just add it straight from the jar. I didn’t take pictures of any of this part, so you’ll just have to imagine.
While I was waiting for the brownies to finish baking was when I really started swearing up a storm. Because is there anything in the original recipe about needing to cook the brownies LONGER than the directions called for? Why, no. No there was no discussion of that at all. The box said to cook them for 23 minutes, but at 23 minutes I the brownie layer was nowhere near done. They had to cook for another 11 minutes. Which isn’t so long, granted, but I was ready to fake my own death to get out of finishing up these brownies AND THE FUN HAD ONLY JUST BEGUN.
You’ve gotta wait for your brownie layer to cool. Which takes HOURS. So I went off to take a nap. Because fuck this shit.
“You take too many naps, lady.”
That’s Jon Snow. Doesn’t he have the coolest eyes? Don’t you love him? Don’t you want to adopt him? TOO LATE. I took him to Petsmart at 11:30 Saturday morning, and he was adopted by 1:00. YOU SNOOZE, YOU LOOOOOOOOSE.
Before I went off to take my nap, I unwrapped my 14 ounces of caramels, and set them aside in a bowl. Fred – who thinks he is hilarious – came into the living room and said “That was a good idea, to unwrap all those caramels. It makes it much easier to eat them!” Oh, har har. (He didn’t really eat any of them, because he knew I’d tear his head off and bake it into the caramel layer of the brownies.)
The brownie layer was cool after my nap (it was a long nap)(shaddup), so I started the caramel layer. Caramels and a little heavy cream, in a saucepan over medium-low heat. The instructions say to stir constantly, but I had shit to do. I was NOT going to stand there for ten minutes and just stir that shit. I went back to the stove every few minutes and stirred the caramels, and somehow it worked out just fine. I think we can conclude that the need for “constant stirring” is a myth perpetrated by THE MAN to keep us all chained to our stoves!
I found it easiest to dump the melted caramel down the middle of the brownies, and then smooth it out with a plastic spatula.
Oh, dude. You see that picture? You see the upper right part of the picture? Those are my fingers (which were on my hand at the time, shockingly), wrapped around the handle of the saucepan. But if you let your eyes go a little unfocused, they kinda look like LIPS. Big colorless lips. Like Angelina Jolie’s lips are swooping in for a slurp of melted caramel before she puts on her lipstick. IT’S KINDA FREAKIN’ ME OUT, MAN.
Anyway.
Smooth your caramel layer with a plastic spatula (or Angelina Jolie’s lips, whichever you prefer), and then you can leave it on the counter to cool for another 145 hours, or you can pop it in the freezer for 15 minutes. I opted for the latter. Because can we GET this SHOW on the motherfucking ROAD?
While the caramel layer was cooling in the fridge (with the brownie and crust layer, obviously)(possibly also Angelina Jolie’s lips), I washed the saucepan I’d used to melt the caramels. And then I tossed the chocolate chips, butter, and heavy cream in there.
Then I stirred. Not constantly (the need for “constant stirring” being a myth, as mentioned), but more often than I did with the caramels, because the chocolate chips were melting faster. I don’t know if the temperature was too high or I accidentally got a little water in there, but I do believe that the chocolate did what is known as “seizing.” Which is to say that it wasn’t smooth and glossy, it was kind of thick and clumpy. I imagine that with a little time and patience and maybe some more heavy cream I could have gotten to the smooth and glossy stage, but I said:
Fuck. That. Shit.
And I dumped it on the top of the caramel layer. (I tasted the melted chocolate first, and it tasted pretty damn good, so I didn’t worry too much about how it looked. Who’ve I got to impress?)
Then I smoothed it out.
Then I let it cool.
About an hour later, Fred decided everything was cooled enough, and it was time to give it a try. So he cut a piece, and he bitched about how the caramel was sticky and chewy. Because this is apparently unusual for caramel. I took a few bites, and personally? No. I didn’t care for it. It was blah. It was kind of bland. The crust was too crumbly. Fred said that aside from the caramel layer being sticky and chewy (I think we all know I’m rolling my eyes right now), he thought the flavor was good. He was wrong.
This is where I fucked up even more, after an ENTIRE FUCKING DAY of making this shit. I didn’t take the “after” picture with all the layers showing beautifully so that all of you would be sucked in by the picture, all “Oh! I need to make that!”, only to find out that it is SO NOT WORTH the time and effort. I figured I’d get a picture in the morning. Only, in the morning while I was laying in bed trying to decide whether to get up or go back to sleep (I never ever go back to sleep, I don’t know why I always think I’m going to), Fred came in and we discussed the brownies and he complained some more about the chewy caramel. I told him that as far as I was concerned the chickens could have it, and so he decided to remove the caramel layer (he was afraid the chickens would eat it and glue their beaks shut), and by the time I realized I hadn’t gotten an “after” picture, he’d already done it.
He reported that the caramel peeled off in one easy sheet, in case you were wondering.
Do yourself a favor – do not EVEN try this nonsense. Life’s too friggin’ short.
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Have a recipe you want us to make? Check out this page (there’s also a link to that page up there under the banner) and follow the instructions to submit a recipe!
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Nance’s Take:
Confession: I never eat Twix™ candy bars because I think they’re awful. And I can’t fathom why anyone would choose a Twix™over a Snickers™or a Milky Way™. But I have to tell you that my husband loves Twix™. He’s also a big weirdo and there is nothing I can do about it.
Here, have a picture of a beagle.
When it comes to seeing pictures of animals in the kitchen you’re going to have to get used to seeing Peace. This damn dog is always in the middle of things when there is food involved. Peace does not like it when I crouch down with the camera aimed at her face. So I just slowly lower the hand that’s holding the camera and casually snap away hoping that something good comes out.
It would have helped if the original poster had mentioned that Keebler™ makes these cookies or even just posted the name correctly. They are Sandies™ by Keebler™. I had never heard of Simply Sandies Shortbread Cookies and figured I was going to have a helluva time finding them. Which is why this entry is late because I am a procrastinating motherfucker when it comes to doing things that could become irksome.
I have never been prompted to give blood from a package of cookies. Whatever works, right?
Surely I’m not the only person on the planet that hates to haul the food processor out to do one freaking thing. What a pain in the ass. I should have thrown these cookies in a plastic bag and took a rolling pin to it.
I’ve had this thing for over 13 years and the locking/protection mechanism still throws me the fuck off every time I go to use it. It won’t work unless I am safe, dammit. I really need to hack this bitch.
If you let someone with ADD control the food processor, they will walk away and let the cookies go way past the sand stage. I do have a pulse button, but eh, that takes commitment and effort. My husband is amazed that I’m still married when you consider the commitment that shit took. So am I, Rick. So am I. Heh.
The crust. This butter cookie mixed with melted butter…it may or may not be delicious and I may or may not have wanted to stop right there, put it in a bowl, and eat it. ALL OF IT.
Guess who forgot to add the Hot Fudge Stuff to the brownie mix when she was making it?
Sometimes being in the kitchen just overwhelms me. I’m pretty sure I just put this in my microwave, turned it on, and walked the fuck away. The funny thing is that I know some of you think that I’m lying since nobody in their right mind would do that, right? Yup.
I glooped it all in there and then I marbled that shit.
Fancypants Nance is fancy.
It was a pretty good recovery.
Peace is concerned because there is no dance party going on in her kitchen. Image Source: Amazon.com
There was no way in hell I was willing to sit down and unwrap all of those caramels so I took the easy way out by buying Caramel Bits.
Rick did this part because I was otherwise occupied (in the bathroom reading a book – yeah, I said it).
He took this picture and I laughed like hell when I saw it because somebody was trying to be artistic. Or maybe just weird.
This. I had just realized my chocolate chips were not milk chocolate so I decided not to risk ruining it with semi-sweet. And there is no way in hell I was running to the store for the right ones because I don’t care what Amanda C. thinks of this recipe! So I took a little piece out of the pan to try it. And then I took another one. Then Rick came along, and then my mom, and there was just no turning back.
Unfinished faux Twix™ brownies. Does it taste like a Twix™ bar? Of course not. It’s not even close. Is it good? Of course it is. It has a buttered butter-cookie crust with a chocolate brownie center and caramel on top. By law this had to be good. But you know what else is good? A damn brownie.
Peace cannot believe that I’ve been in the kitchen for so long and there was no meat involved.
You know how we all have that one friend/relative that has to make everyone else’s food look like ass? And whatever they make is so delicious and over-the-top that you rave about it and even ask for the recipe? Even when you know damn well you’re not going to be bothered because WHOINTHEFUCK has time for this shit? That’s this recipe.
I’ll pass.
Twix Brownies - Nance and Robyn make the same recipe
1 (12.8 oz.) package of Keebler Simply Sandies Shortbread Cookies
6 T butter, melted
Brownie Layer
1 box of brownie mix
Ingredients required in directions on back of box
¼ cup hot fudge ice cream topping
Caramel Layer
14 oz of caramels
2 T heavy cream
Chocolate Topping
1 (11.5 oz.) bag milk chocolate chips
2 T butter
¼ c heavy cream
Instructions
Grease the bottom of a 9x13 pan OR line pan with foil first (and grease the bottom of the foil). Using foil will make it easier to cut the brownies at the end.
Using a food processor, pulse half your cookies until they resemble sand. Remove to a bowl, and process the other half of the cookies. Mix all cookie sand with melted butter until well mixed, and press into the bottom of your pan.
Prepare brownie batter as directed on the back of the package, mixing ¼ c. hot fudge ice cream topping into the brownie batter (don't heat the topping first). Pour batter on top of cookie crust and bake as directed. You will likely have to bake longer than the directions call for; once the original bake time is up, continue baking and check in two-minute increments until brownies are done. (Check using a toothpick inserted into the brownies 1 inch from the side of the pan. When toothpick comes out clean or with only a few crumbs, brownies are done.) Cool completely.
Place caramels and cream in a saucepan over med-low heat, stirring occasionally, until melted and creamy. Pour over cooled brownies. Spread the caramel as evenly as possible. Let cool until set (you can stick the pan in the freezer for 15 minutes to make this step faster).
Melt chocolate, butter, and cream together in a saucepan over med-low heat, stirring occasionally, until melted and creamy. Pour over cooled caramel layer and spread as evenly as possible. Cool.
